Conservatives woo the arts sector with promises to boost philanthropy and cut administrative costs.
Legislative changes including simplifying Gift Aid, allowing acceptance-in-lieu gifts by living donors, and creating a new status for national culture and heritage bodies are among the policies put forward by the Conservative Party in a draft arts manifesto, entitled ‘The Future of the Arts’. Many of the policies will come as no surprise to the arts sector, having been widely reported already. These include enabling arts organisations to set up their own endowment funds in return for long-term funding, retaining the arm’s length principle, and “restoring the National Lottery to its four core aims”. The party says that, if elected, it would “catalyse philanthropy” by making more grants conditional on recipients raising money from other sources, and by changing current guidelines “to allow arts organisations to reward their donors”.
The manifesto also makes clear that the Tories would “insist” that funding organisations reduce their administrative costs to 5% of their budgets, saying that “the seven main funding distributors spent £120m on administrative costs – over 11% of the £1.05bn that they distributed”. These figures have already been challenged by Arts Council England which stated that “administration costs are heading for six per cent this spring”.
A further proposal with a potentially wide-ranging impact is to create a new and more flexible status for arts and heritage bodies which are currently non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs) or ‘quangos’, and which therefore report directly to the Government. Currently, organisations such as the British Museum and the National Gallery must abide by the same fiscal and governance rules as other NDPBs. Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt writes that “rules like year-end requirements to use or lose budgets are totally inappropriate. Likewise the requirement to hand back to the Treasury any funds raised, for which they then need to re-secure permission to spend.” The document states that this new format would “allow them the independence to be truly effective and entrepreneurial fundraising bodies... [with] both the ability and responsibility to raise money both for capital projects and also for endowments to give them funding security over the long term”. This mirrors a proposal made by the Liberal Democrats in ‘The Power of Creativity’ (AP211). AP contacted a number of national organisations which would be affected by these changes. The British Museum, the Tate, the National Gallery and the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council declined to comment.
There are also some notable omissions. Support for innovation is not mentioned, and recent headline policies of diversity, inclusion and regeneration are absent. The issue of access is addressed through harnessing online technology, continuing free entry to national museums and galleries, and a promise to “rationalise” schools’ arts funding. The Tories say they will promote three aims in schools: to enable all children to have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, to learn to sing and to “receive a solid cultural education”.